I'm originally from St. Louis, but have lived in western Massachusetts for many years. I made a 3,722 mile pilgrimage by car to the Midwest—and back!—in 2014, thus one reason for poems about Willa Cather and Monk's Mound. My latest book is Ruins Assembling, from Shape&Nature Press, 2014.

Looking into Willa Cather's bedroom

The Plexiglas in her bedroom doorwayis a sweet touch, letting us see but not feel her quilt—

which doesn't look like Webster County on Google Earth,its rectangular feedlots with its dots for cows, its alien circles from irrigation, its stubborn watercourseszig-zagging, bucking the grid of roads—

her quilt which between a thumb and forefingermust be turning to dust, like Nebraska's fine talc of a soil, and not flooded by a wine-dark sea, but held in place by her wine-stained grass

and letting us see but not touch the flowered wallpaper peeling away as evening primrose petals still doon this side of the Plexiglas, see but not sniffthe walls' sauerkrautness

so in this photograph I took—took!— her wish to keep her room always as it was,a Cather diorama, was honored, up to a point, beyond which we read and race home plum breathless,most unreasonably excited, having got insideanother person's skin, her Annie, our Antonia,and that aura in the picture I took is fixedover her bed, a vague pentagram,

making us see her Jim, our Willain the clear solidity in her doorway.

From Monk's Mound, Cahokia, Illinois

For days now one thing hums my head. A millennium ago this earth mound was risingsix inches a year, not on its ownunless dirt is as willful as webelieve we are, as they must have believed.This mound built up two feet one year, the next cut one foot down, animating the centuries, the cursing sky'smouth eating dirt, subject to water's will.

Many humans murmur in my head.Many humans keep hunched over carrying woven baskets filled with dirt working as the Birdman's animals, dump them where the Birdman points a winged arm. Many humans walk upright the sick babies of themselves back to the earth pit.

All this takes place in the court of my head. My own Birdman, my own man-god or god-man judges,ten generations then, now carrying dirtbuilding this mound—now a millenniumlater strolls, photographing itself,a whole millennium pictured smilingon top of a mound—until heaven's dirt rises a hundred feet, scores of bodies (in my head they're tattooed, feathers in red scars making their arms wings) carrying sacred logs to build the Birdman's lodge five stories.

Now, always, dad steps deliberately, carrying his emptied carcass down from heaven.He nods then, now, at a child climbing stepsone at a time, breathing deliberatelyfor the Birdman, seeing descendingdirt bearing dirt, being raised, the unrisen.